The headline to the link reads, “Why the Republican ‘Establishment’ Can’t Stomach Rick Santorum.” Let me add a subhead that says, “And why I can’t, either.” So forgive the lengthy excerpt, but this Mark Davis column is important.

I couldn’t define it until I recently read Mark Twain’s account of his return to Hannibal, Missouri, in Life on the Mississippi.

Twain wrote:

The Model Boy of my time — we never had but the one — was perfect: perfect in manners, perfect in dress, perfect in conduct, perfect in filial piety, perfect in exterior godliness; but at bottom he was a prig; and as for the contents of his skull, they could have changed place with the contents of a pie, and nobody would have been the worse off for it but the pie.

As for the contents of Santorum’s skull, I see not pie-filling but a zest for culture war. Launching a culture war now would fracture the Republican Party, while striking independent voters as massively beside-the-point with near 9 percent unemployment and an international situation pregnant with danger.

In the face of such a simple political target as President Obama, Santorum simply cannot stay on message. He and his people feel compelled to go beyond the issue of religious liberty to let us know that he believes contraception is morally wrong. I respect his right to that belief—and I join him in passionately upholding the right of the Catholic Church not to be coerced into acting against its doctrine on contraception. But that doesn’t mean I embrace that belief itself. I don’t. And I sure don’t want to hear about contraception from the bully pulpit of the White House—neither do tens of millions of other Republicans, many of them Catholics.

Or take Santorum’s strange denouncement of President Obama as a “snob” for wanting people to go to college. Or his odd diatribe against John F. Kennedy over his classic speech on separation of church and state. Both statements may contain many yeasty issues and fine distinctions—all of them are irrelevant to beating Obama.

And really, how tone-deaf do you have to be to launch an out-of-the-blue attack on JFK?

Or as I put it a couple weeks ago, “Santorum is the “See ‘n’ Say candidate.” As if to add just one more bullet point to an already-long list of missteps, this weekend Santorum launched a war on porn. You can imagine the hay they’re making on the left, but even at Forbes they think Rick has stuck his foot in yet another pile of his own doo-doo:

Ultimately, we have bigger problems than restricting what adults can do with other adults. If Santorum really wants to fight obscenity he should focus on limiting the crazy things senators and congressmen do with unconsenting taxpayer dollars.

Indeed. And what’s next — a crusade to strike the word “bitchin’” from the patois of America’s youth? With Santorum, you just never know what triviality is going to earn his ire or where his campaign will veer. If he’s the nominee, each week a gleeful press will set him up and knock him down — all the while enabling Team Obama to avoid talking about jobs or ObamaCare. It’s like the GOP now has a special Kamikaze Wing.

And the worst part? I’ll never be able to look at pie the same way again.

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1.
Neil

Mmmmm…brains.

Sorry, all that work for a blog post and all I’m going to remember is Mark Twain’s incipient zombie-ism.

You mean Santorum is actually discussing, you know, cultural issues? He’s putting forth his SoCon creds? And in the process alienating all the FiCons and Independents? Oh, and people who actually, umm, understand Evolutionary Theory?

The Dems are desperately trying to gin up a culture war because they can’t run on their record. Santorum is walking right into their trap. Mittens, for all that I don’t like about him, is at least staying out of it and focusing on the harm this regime has inflicted on America.

I actually voted for Santorum in the Florida primary. Not because I expected or wanted him to win, but to send a message to Romney, who I did expect to win: ‘You are on thin ice, notice that the wind is blowing conservative, mister weather vane.’
Of the candidates that were running I find none of them to be perfect (though all vastly superior to the current white house occupant), and I preferred Bachmann, but she was already out by then.
People I like better than anyone who is running – Fred Thompson, Chris Christie, Ryan, even Marco Rubio. I wonder if they know something we don’t and thats why they stayed out.

I’ve always believed, and still believe, that this is where most of the truth lies. Very few people are actual Santorum supporters, Santorum is simply the last standing “not-Romney” after all the other not-Romneys have come and gone.

But he’s becoming a nuisance. He cannot win a general election and his candidacy is starting to make the Republicans look scary–and he’s doing it for no good reason.

I have nothing against Rick Santorum. I would gladly vote for him over Obama. And I do not believe if he became President he would be that much different than Mitt Romney (in substance). But he is not going to be the nominee due to his failure to capitalize on where Romney is weak. Attacking libertarians and independents is insane in this election cycle. I am not asking Rick to compromise his own personal principles, but he is not getting there is an election that needs to be won and the country does not want social conservative, but economic change.

My problem is neither Romney nor Santorum seemed focused on the real issue: Attacking Barack Obama every chance they get on Obama’s record over the last four years. Mitt cannot and should not pull his punches. Rick Santorum seems intent on alienating folks who are potential allies instead of focusing their anger at the current state of the country at the guy who deserves the blame (Barack Obama).

Any GOP candidate who does not have $5 gas, $16 trillion deficits and 9% unemployment as his main bullet points in every speech needs to go home yesterday. Our government does almost everything badly, most of it expensively and much if it wastefully. it’s too big and it does too much. The solution is less government, not expnanding government further into our homes and lives. There’s nothing conservative about goevement making more of out everday decisons for us. And having a joker who supported Arlen Spector over Pat Toomey lecture anyone about conservatism is sickening.

Contraception, speaking Spanish in Puerto Rico, and porno are issues no American adult should think one second about within the sphere of presidential politics. Please go home.

I don’t buy that the man has a strategy. His bold social conservative statements only show he has no sense of priorities, and the Reagan Democrats you speak of are more concerned about their jobs than whether contraception is evil or porn should be prosecuted. Most, I think, would rather live and let live on both points, making Santorum’s plan to frivolously waste DOJ resources on porn viewing a substantial negative to them. It’s also a negative to most conservatives for that reason, and because he walked away from an easy target just to pointlessly feed the media’s tired old “Republicans want to force Puritan morals on you” message. Only the most extreme SoCons will back him on this. Libertarians have good reason to hate his rhetoric, independents will be actively turned off by it, and any other Democrats thinking of jumping ship based just on Obama’s record will have strong enough doubts to stay aboard.

If Santorum’s harping on social issues that most people don’t even care about is a strategy, it’s the sort of strategy employed by a certain “super genius” who enjoys free rush shipping for life from the Acme company. Only not as smart. And say what you will about dear old Wile E., at least he kept his eye on the ball. There’s no longer a question in my mind who’d make a better president.

There’s a lot I really like about Santorum. He’s taken on Romney in the debates specifically to get him to clarify his position on Romneycare/Obamacare, which needed to be done. He’s conversant – fluent, even – in the language of papal encyclicals, which are the moral authority that tie the left’s “social justice” to the fundamental right to private property, among other things. He’s human, with human passion and human faults to the plastic Romney or the carefully-framed President.

There’s a lot I fear about a Romney candidacy. He can’t credibly attack the President’s greatest weakness, Obamacare. He’s easy to tag with the “Wall Street” label by the media, which blunts the criticism that President Obama has taken about a zillion dollars from Wall Street and has put them all in his cabinet. He can’t connect with the vast majority of the American people – it’s just his personality. I understand and empathize with him about that, but it’s not happening.

That’s where I’m coming from here, so you get my full meaning when I say that Rick really, really, REALLY needs to learn to shut up. Ugh.

Santorum has decided to run on the Church Lady platform. Isn’t that special?

Gingrich wants sex on the moon.

Ron Paul wants to be left alone so he can be master of his domain.

And Romney is what’s left on the plate when the rest of the pie is scraped into the garbage. Filling clingons.

The Stupid Party has offered up political 97 lb. weaklings, who apparently get their jollies kicking sand in their own faces. Neat trick. Wake me when they get around to realizing that the Constitution is under assault.